The complete boxer
The book illustrates the art of boxing as a self-defense system and professional boxing in the ring. Boxing, its secrets and techniques.
Some reviews about the book:
"Your description of the origin and purposes of Boxing is of itself interesting and instructive and accurate to a degree. Coming to the General Hints, I have read and re-read them, and I am not master enough of the English language to find a word that could convey a high enough estimate of the whole of the practical advice, and they show a masterly knowledge of all that happens in the ring."
"Your Training remarks are valuable and absolutely correct in my humble judgment. And I think it would be an impertinence on my part were I to in any way criticize so able a work — on an art that is healthy, honest, and in the best interests of daily life and exercise, and a game that helps young men to keep their head, know what a blow is, keep their temper under trying circumstances, and above all helps to educate them in the most valuable asset in life "
— Presence of Mind.
Excerpt
Sweet Science of Bruising ! how often has man, Twice as strong as his fellow, presumed just to lark it ; But deceived in his brutal and hectoring plan, Has lain, "wanting wind," in Fleet Ditch or Fleet Market." IT is perfectly impossible to treat Boxing merely as the Noble Art of Self-Defence.
That is what it is habitually called ; and before proceeding to describe the various lights in which it may be regarded nowadays, the reader should be reminded that in the first instance — in its genesis — boxing was a sport and a sport only.
If people wanted to hurt each other they re- sorted to weapons ; and if there were no weapons handy we may be very sure that they tried to strangle each other, and learned the best and quickest way of doing that before ever they considered the advantages of temporary disablement from a hard blow with the clenched fist. For personal warfare, with bad blood in it, natural methods were resorted to : and boxing is not in the least natural. It is sheer artifice.
Natural methods are animal methods — scratching and clawing and kicking. Michell, writing in the Badminton Library, points out that children learn the means for strife from cats, dogs and horses ; that even the closing of the hand for purposes of inflicting injury is itself unnatural.
The argument may be carried further than this, for it is safe to say that in human beings, in common with other animals, there is an instinct to use natural weapons : teeth and nails because they are sharp ; feet, because the legs are strong ; the head — for but- ting — because it is (or certainly was in the days of our remote ancestors) hard.
Then, in the process of civilization, men learned the damage to be wrought with knuckles. But human life was little accounted of ; and if a man attacked you or aggravated you in some way, a weapon — anything from a heavy bone to a fine steel blade — was what you took to him.
On occasions of lesser gravity, a slap with the open palm would be sufficient, as it is to-day : and it is certainly probable that two quarrelsome young Greeks, emulating some Olympic hero, may have battered each other with their bare knuckles.
the book details :
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